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Punch the clock, not the taxpayers

Employees have for years been getting cheated out of their hard-earned pay, and we can’t afford to stop cheating them.

That’s essentially the most recent excuse being offered for why the county should junk a never-implemented, automated payroll system it purchased nearly two years ago, squandering as much as $58,000 in the process.

Some commissioners said this week that since the new ADP payroll system went into testing, they’ve gotten phone calls and emails from department heads who don’t like the way it’s working. Commissioner June Beckum warned that the tests show the system may increase county expenses, because it tracks employees’ time to the minute, rather than approximating as employees do now on hand-written time sheets.

This raises a disturbing prospect. Wage and hour laws are clear that employees must be paid for time worked, and the penalties for willful violators can be severe. If it is true that county employees are routinely working off the clock, the county’s taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars in back pay and fines. Department heads who knowingly allowed or enforced such unfair practices should be fired or recalled immediately.

And now that this travesty has been revealed, some commissioners, including Mrs. Beckum, apparently plan to sanction the dangerous status quo by voting on Monday to terminate the contract with ADP.

Frankly, we don’t buy it. We think if large numbers of county employees were routinely being shorted on their pay we’d have heard about it before. There would have been numerous formal complaints filed. We also believe that if there was evidence this new system would uniformly boost employees’ pay, the employees would be clamoring for its installation.

We suspect there are other reasons why county leaders are opposing this new software, such as politics and control.

The county’s budget director estimates that the new system could save the county $400,000 per year by eliminating mistakes and inefficiencies. It will allow a reduction in budget office employees. It will save a great deal of time spent by employees manually tracking their hours and by department heads who must redundantly check and sign off on time sheets.

And it would make falsifying hours or cooking the books a lot tougher, should anyone ever attempt it.

The system is not perfect, and some changes will no doubt have to be made to accommodate it. Change is always difficult. But are we really supposed to believe that in the year 2011, when nearly every significant financial transaction in the world is tracked electronically, the only payroll system that will work for our county is a pen-and-paper process straight out of the 1800s?

ADP is the nation’s largest payroll processor, used by hundreds of thousands of businesses. Would all those customers use ADP’s systems if they raised expenses?

This new system will ensure the county’s citizens that their tax dollars are being used efficiently, but it will also ensure the county’s employees that a minute worked is a minute paid.